


The Doctor's Army

by bigredwhovians



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Bad Wolf, Gen, Tenth Doctor Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 02:12:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigredwhovians/pseuds/bigredwhovians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor is kidnapped. The TARDIS is wreaked. Time is falling apart, history and the future are colliding endlessly. The time lock will break and the Time Lords will have their revenge. In order to restore the universe to its proper balance, it will take an army. An army of time. An army of the Doctor's companions. Originally posted on FanFiction.net</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a joint effort between two authors, both of whom are avid Doctor Who fans and wish to appear as a single entity under the joint pseudonym bigredwhovians. Fair warning, in the words of River Song: SPOILERS!

Let me tell you a story.

There once was a Time Lord who stole a TARDIS and wandered all of the space and time. He was the last Time Lord, the one who had condemned the rest of his kind. He ran away from them and his past, trying to atone for the deaths he had caused by protecting the innocent. It was a lonely life and eventually he started taking companions with him, children who would follow him with starlight in their eyes and dreams held in their hands. He thought he was helping them. Instead, he turned them into weapons, soldiers, the things he despised. They were all willing to die for him, to protect him. That was never what he meant to do. He had never meant for things to go that far, but he turned his companions all into monsters that lingered in dark corners and waited to strike.

He left all his companions in the end. But they never left him. He was the Doctor, soaring through time and space, touching and changing so many lives. He could never stay in one place, stay with one person. He would save the world time and time again. But this is not the story of the Doctor's victories. This is the story of how the Doctor died and it begins with me. I am the Master. Your enemy, Doctor, don't try and deny it. You and I...we were meant to have this fight. Forever and ever, destined to clash our swords, to watch the other burn and be reborn, to die and yet live.

The Doctor, my Doctor, my Doctor! You wonderful man you...you are ice and you are fire, you are destruction, you are pure desire. You are the world and time and you are black holes in the night sky. You are the destroyer of the world and the protector born again. You are a god who tries so hard to be human. You are a contradiction, Doctor, my Doctor. You will drive me mad, don't you understand?

We could dance tonight. I know you danced with her, wasn't it all you ever wanted? To dance with your precious little flower and pretend that everything was perfect in the world, that for once no one died? Didn't you want to dance with her all night long and never have the song end? But all songs must end and we must go to meet our finale, the resounding four beats. Don't you hear them? They echo in the world, in my head, rattling around my chest and the hunger it creates...it creeps up my sternum, tearing at my throat, longing to consume the whole world...cast it into fire and destruction and end all in the darkness that'll fall. Don't you see it? Can't you hear it?

We were made for each other, Doctor. My Doctor. I am your Master. Mortal enemies until the end of time itself, but time never ends. It stretches on and on, never ending, no matter how fast we race against it. Time will always win and leave us behind, wondering why. We'll crash and burn tonight. I won't change course and you wouldn't risk stopping. We are a supernova and a black hole that exist together, one destroying, one creating, constantly canceling the other out, but now one will win. One will overpower the other.

You protect your companions so much...why? What does it do to care for people, to care for humans, the weak mortals? We are the last of our kind, yet you reject me. You say you want to help me, to travel with me, but you say that because you're afraid. You're afraid of what we could be, what we could do. We could watch the world burn tonight, Doctor. Won't you join me? We could be everything, Doctor, my Doctor.

Four beats. Four knocks. The drums. They haunt me. You've heard them. You know they're real. I'm not as mad you think I am. We are all driven mad by our own thoughts. You wouldn't leave me alone to drown. You begged me to regenerate...you are so afraid of being alone, but you shun everyone. You're afraid of being hurt. You know the pain...you how it feels, but this will be worse. This will be so much worse. I will make you feel it all, Doctor, my Doctor. You and I, we will go down into hell itself and burn by flames so hot they are ice. We will spend eternity together and I will watch your end.

I did not sacrifice myself to save you. I was controlled by rage. The madness of those four knocks, the drums, oh the drums that permeate the world. The drums of war. They put them there, the Time Lords. They needed me. They still need me. Oh, they need me and you do too, Doctor, my Doctor. You can deny it all you want, but you cannot lie to your hearts and with each beat, you know.

Now I see that they were right. The Time Lords were completely right. You must be stopped, Doctor. You can't be allowed to roam free. You damage all you touch, make them into your weapons, your tools, and they can never change back. You have ruined so many lives. You are not safe for the world. But, don't be afraid. You and me...we'll spend an eternity together, an eternity suffering.

It'll be perfect, the Doctor, my Doctor.

:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

The Time Lords had been sent back to their own time and with them came the Master. He was gasping for breath on the floor, barely conscious.

"What do we do with him?" asked Rassilon, Lord President. He was injured, but still alive. He was hanging at threads, waiting for the fallout.

The Visionary started tapping the table in the four beats again. The Master curled up weakly and covered his ears. The Visionary turned her endless eyes on the committee. "The beats end not yet. On and on they go...four knocks. The sound of drums."

The Partisan spoke then. "What do you mean?"

"He still lives yet. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, hear them resound. Hear them linger. Hear them destroy. Here, your hearts will break."

Rassilion cocked his head. "We could use him. The four knocks...the passage remains open still. Does it not, Visionary? Answer. You have foreseen this, have you not?"

The Visionary scribbled wildly on the paper, eyes manic and muttering to herself. After a few moments, she stared at him. "Use him and more is at stake than the end of time. Destruction, follow the thread, following it all the way through and you can try and stop all that he's ever done, but it could all fall apart. Everything shall fall, all the lives, all the deaths, every single thing will fall into the stars and all you will see is...is...

"Time lock, heart lock, key and lock, what is the key? How do you end our misery? If there is no key, find the creator of the lock. The lock, the lock, it holds things in orbit, great things, but will greatness be freed if the lock is broken? You will lose it all, all, all, it all will fail...all will be lost. The blue box, the four knocks, the TARDIS in the night sky, the moon in the ocean, the fish fly through the town, the innocent will die, the weapons will fight, the army, the army...they are no army. They number few, one short of two four knocks but more shall come. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, the knocks, the breaking hearts of a Time Lord."

The Woman dropped her hands, no longer content to stand by silently.

"Don't do this. You don't know what will happen-"

"Silence. Go back to your weeping. You are guilty." Rassilon dismissed her with a wave of his hand and went to kneel by the Master's broken form. "Arise, Master. You have a new purpose."

"Purpose? What purpose? The purpose is gone. Gone, gone, gone...Doctor..." the Master muttered wildly, pulling painfully at his hair. "Where is the Doctor? My Doctor, he promised. We will end. We will burn."

"You will go to the Doctor. Find him. Bring him back. Do you understand?"

The Master looked up with a lopsided grin. "The Doctor. The Doctor, he is mine. I will destroy him."

"Go. Do. Now."

The Master's laughter lingered in the room long after he was gone.

The Partisan's quiet voice shivered just slightly. "What is the plan, Lord President?"

Rassilon pet his staff distractedly. "Worry not on that. We will be free or he will pay."

The Visionary looked at the night sky that was the link of the Time Lords' to reality. She whispered as she drew the charcoal sketch of a police box, "The Doctor's weapons."


	2. Collision

"Didn't really need you in the end did we?" Martha joked as she climbed up the ramp to join the Doctor at the TARDIS railing. She was still feeling a little giddy from their close escape onboard the S.S. Pentallian.

The Doctor didn't answer; he just stood in stony silence, a distant, sad look in his eyes.

"Doctor, are you alright?" Martha asked, wondering if her little joke had hurt him.

He turned his head and considered her with those impossibly deep eyes. "Martha…" he began, "if I hadn't survived that… if I wasn't okay."

"Doctor?"

He ignored her interruption. "What would you do?"

She was taken aback. "I… I…" She had never really thought about it before.

The Doctor leaned forward on the TARDIS console. "There's no guarantee I'll always survive, Martha. I may be clever and fast, but I'm not invulnerable. And I have enemies. So many enemies…" He stared distantly at the TARDIS core.

She was silent.

The Doctor straightened up abruptly. "Listen to me Martha, if something like this or worse happens to me again, I need you to promise me something."

She nodded. "Sure… anything."

"Get back to the TARDIS and close the doors. I have emergency programs in the system that'll activate even if I'm not around."

"Emergency programs? What do those do?"

The Doctor began digging in his suit pockets. "They'll take you home." He explained flatly with a slight catch in his voice that could have easily been passed off as simple tickle in the throat.

Martha wasn't convinced. There was something else she was sure. "But what about you? Am I just supposed to leave you behind? How will you get back?"

He didn't answer. He never did. "You'll be needing this…" He pulled his hand from his pocket and held up a key on a silver chain.

Martha gasped. "Really?" It was a TARDIS key, her very own key to the Doctor's machine. She momentarily forgot her frustration with the man as she watched it swing back and forth in the light.

The Doctor gave her one of his half-smiles that did nothing to break the sad look on his face. "Frequent flyer's privilege."

:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

It was ready. She had to take a step back to take it all in. The enormous machine filled over half the room, a hulking mass of black metal and switches and lights. After nearly two years of research, work, tests and failures, it was ready.

Rose Tyler gently laid one hand on the dimension cannon. "Finally." The word echoed endlessly in the empty room. The effect, though familiar, still gave her chills. These late nights at Torchwood 1 had become commonplace, her fellow team members no longer questioned the dark circles under her eyes or the clothes that matched the ones she had worn the day before. Even Mickey had stopped begging her to go home. She hadn't had a shower or a decent night's sleep in over a week. She was barely keeping herself going on coffee and adrenaline at this point. But it was all worth it. The cannon was finished. They could end this.

She looked up at the sky through the room's single window. The sky was dark but not because of clouds. The sky was completely clear but only a handful of stars still shone, scattered about the heavens, unable to see each other's light.

There was so little time left.

She knew the cannon was dangerous, that had been a given when the design had first been in progress. Torchwood had designed a testing process for the machine that would take a week or more, gradually building up to sending her through, back to her universe. She didn't have that kind of time.

Rose walked around the machine, switching it on and priming the mechanisms. The cannon's lights began flashing and the center mechanisms began to turn. She stood in front of the cannon, staring down the barrel at the whirring machine. The dimension stabilizer was picking up speed, emitting a low-pitched hum. It was blue but not quite her favorite shade of blue. Only one thing was her favorite shade of blue.

She fingered the switch on the wall. There wasn't time to test everything. She would skip a few levels, just to save time. The first object lay on the table to her right, something inanimate but alive. She hefted it with a small smile and aimed at the center of the whirring machine. The humming was echoing ominously around the room, the lights from the cannon flickering along the walls, throwing shadows into sharp relief one second and destroying them the next second.

This is it. She threw the object at the same moment she pulled the switch. There was a blinding flash of blue-white light and a sound like a plasma rifle going off. She ducked and covered her head in case the object came ricocheting back to her. When several seconds passed and nothing exploded, she uncovered her head and rose to her feet. The cannon had quieted back to its pre-jump hum. The object was nowhere in sight.

The monitor on the table let out a blip and she rushed to check. It had made it. The object was completely intact. In another universe.

Her heart was racing now. It worked. It really worked.

She raced to the coat closet near the entrance. It'll work for me too. I'm going back. She yanked her jacket from its peg and hastily exchanged it for her lab coat. She opened her locker and removed the only things she would be taking back with her from this world: the gun and the key. The key went in its old place around her neck while the gun took up residence on her shoulder.

So this was it. Her hands trembled as they adjusted the gun strap. She was really going back.

Rose's thoughts briefly went to her family. They would miss her: Mum and Pete and Tony and Mickey. But they would understand. This was so much bigger than any of them, then all of them. They knew this was what she had been working towards for years, simple, not really that much in retrospect: a way back.

She silently made her way back to the front of the cannon, where the mechanisms were still turning away, humming mysteriously. It was time to go home.

She closed her eyes and clutched at the key. "I'm coming Doctor…" She whispered. "I'm coming back." She threw the switch and started running.

:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

Martha held out her hands for the key. Softly, the Doctor began to lower it towards her outstretched palms. The tip of the metal was ghosting just above Martha's hands when the whole room suddenly pitched sideways.

The Doctor flew onto the console, barely catching himself. Martha tumbled halfway down the ramp towards the door, the key nowhere in sight.

"What the hell was that?" She tried to scramble back to her feet but was thrown flat on her face as the TARDIS rocked again.

The Doctor pulled himself around the console, trying to reach the screen. The entire ship was trembling and shaking.

"We've hit something!" He finally managed to grab the edge of the monitor and twist it around to face him. His face fell. "Or rather, something's hit us."

He was thrown to the ground as the TARDIS spun uncontrollably. They were still in flight but something was messing up their course. Martha thought she heard a woman screaming, but it might have been her as the ship pitched wildly and she was sent hurtling across the console. She crashed into the railing on the far side of the room.

"Martha! Are you alright?"

The Doctor's voice sounded fuzzy… incoherent… She tried to stumble to her feet but could barely lift herself off the ground. I must have a… a concussion… or something…

The last thing Martha heard before she passed out was someone knocking on the TARDIS door.

Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap.

:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

The Master wandered through time and space, made up of eternity and yet clinging to this world by a string. He was here and he was there. He existed and he was just a shadow of the man he once was. He was omnipresent and he was ever absent, slipping through the cracks in the universe in his desperate search. He had to find the Doctor, find his Doctor and bring him to the scene of his greatest crime, lead him to their destiny. The Doctor might think things were over, that the time lock was firmly in place and the Master could never leave, but he was wrong, so very, very wrong. This was only the beginning of everything, the fall of the universe, the beginning of time, the destruction of the sun, the universe taking its next breath. Everything was going to fall into place and all would be right in the world.

And this was all because the Doctor and the Master needed each other. They defined themselves by each other, the other's presence, the other's absence, because in the end, it was the same: the Master and the Doctor. The two of them were destined to fight this battle forever.

The Master needed a way to find a way to the Doctor, his Doctor. He was at a bit of loss for a moment, because searching all of time and space would not be quick enough to find the Doctor, his Doctor.

Then, the Master remembered. The Doctor had had one companion, a companion who had taken the time vortex into her head, had become part of all of time and then scattered her name through all of time and space, following herself and the Doctor around. The Master could follow them and track the Doctor, his Doctor.

He tracked the Bad Wolf through time, stalking her in the forests of the universe, lingering in the shadows, just barely out of sight. He followed her, a glimpse of a person by the graffiti that decorated the proverbial trees. He followed her to the wall, to the void, and it was then he knew how to capture the Doctor. The void particles covered the Bad Wolf and those markers would always be stuck to her.

From there, he began to decide the best way to grab the Doctor when it was just him and the Bad Wolf alone, because the graffiti was too visible a place and the Master was still weak. However, he could take on the Bad Wolf.

He watched her appear in the sky, hurtling through space. The Master followed her and together, they collided with the blue box. The Bad Wolf screamed, just barely clinging onto the tumbling TARDIS. The Master threw back his head and laughed. He raised his hand and tapped out the drumbeats.

:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

The woman, the first of the weeping angels as such she was branded, went to the Visionary as the chamber emptied out. She laid a gentle hand on the Visionary's forearm. "What do you see? Please, tell me what you foresee of his fate."

The Visionary did not look up, her eyes blank and unseeing as she drew a police box from the 1960s on the planet Earth. Above the box, she began to sketch a pair of piercing eyes, ones that stared out of the page, full of tears, but strong.

"The wolf will return at the full moon and haunt the shadow, the shadow will search through the darkness for meaning. The broken doll will find her strength and accept the challenge. The child of water will learn to fly as her ancient soldier will wait for her and protect her from all that try to harm her. The face will swagger in and lead the way before he dies. And she…she will return."

"But what does that mean?" the woman asked softly. "What of him?"

"He? He is everywhere and he is nowhere. He is contaminated and he is pure. He is waiting and he is fighting." The Visionary harshly crossed out everything she had previously drawn. "He is just a word."


	3. Impact

A hard bump woke Amy from her fitful sleep. She groaned quietly as she sat up, her back complaining from the position she had been dozing in. The bus was rolling along the uneven dirt roads of the Scottish countryside, dipping and swaying so much it was difficult to tell if it was still moving forward at all. The sun was just barely poking over the horizon in the distance. Amy rolled to her other side and tried to get more comfortable. There were still a few more hours to go before they would reach Edinburgh. Maybe she'd be able to drift off again…

The bus hit a particularly large bump and Amy's head banged painfully against the seat.

"Oi, think you could slow down a bit mate? Not all of us are early birds!" Amy opened her eyes and glared at the loud woman across the aisle from her. She was probably in her mid-30s and was also traveling alone. She was also ginger.

Closing her eyes, Amy rolled over and tried to curl up. She was on this tour to relax. To get away from the Raggedy Man who had haunted her since she was five. Her shrink had recommended the trip. Said it would help get her mind off of things. She had not traveled really in her life, choosing to stay in Leadworth in case the Doctor returned. He had said he would come back. He had promised. But, what if he returned when Amy was not there? Her shrink said that an imaginary friend was not returning for her. It was all in her head. She needed to get away and see how nothing extraordinary would happen. There was no Doctor, no Raggedy Man, no space ship and time machine, no blue box. No cracks in her wall. It was all just an extremely vivid dream she had had as a child and there was no truth in it. And so, somehow, the shrink had told her all of this and convinced her to go on this trip to Scotland alone, where she was only one of two redheads on the bus, surprisingly so. Perhaps Rory had had quite a bit to do with it, because he had gently convinced her to take a break and go explore Scotland. Said that it would be good for them to spend a little time apart, for her to figure out that there was no Raggedy Man. They would be good. They would be fine, apart. Amy would go away for one tiny, insignificant week and when she came back, there would be no Doctor who had come and gone, just Rory, stable Rory, waiting for her back at home. Everything would be good and fine.

Sleep was impossible. Amy opened her eyes. Then she sat up, all traces of lethargy gone. The countryside of Scotland was beautiful, undoubtedly so. It stretched on and on, rolling green hills and moors, beauty and aged. It was lovely, the scenery truly was.

But that was not what had caught Amy's attention. It was the object falling from the sky. Rather specifically, it was the battered blue box that had haunted her dreams for the last twelve years.

"Doctor…"

Amy spun around. The other redhead was staring at the falling object, her eyes wide and glowing with excitement.

"You know him?" The woman turned to look at her. "You've seen that box before?" Amy asked desperately. Maybe she wasn't crazy.

The woman nodded. "Yeah. It's called a…"

"TARDIS." They said together. Amy's face broke into a smile.

"It's him, it's the Doctor…"

The redheaded woman straightened up.

"STOP THE BUS!" she cried. Startled, the driver slammed on the breaks and the wheels screeched to a halt, throwing half the passengers into the seats in front of them.

The woman turned to Amy. "Come on then!"

Amy didn't need to be told twice. She snatched her bag from the rack overhead as the other woman scooped up a backpack and made her way to the front of the bus.

"Everything alright ladies?" The driver asked as the two gingers approached. "This where you're getting off then?"

The red-haired woman smiled warmly at him. "Oh yes… we're just… going to see an old friend."

"Don't wait up." Amy called over her shoulder as they disembarked. The driver tipped his cap to her and shut the doors behind them.

The women shouldered their bags and gazed out at the falling travel machine as the bus rumbled away. It might have been Amy's imagination but she thought she saw a thin cloud of smoke around it.

The redheaded woman adjusted the strap on her bag and held out her free hand to Amy.

"Name's Donna by the way." The she said with a smile. "Donna Noble."

Amy smiled back. "Amy Pond. Nice to meet you."

The two women grasped hands and made their way towards the TARDIS.

:-:-:-:

Hand-in-hand, Captain Jack Harkness and Martha Jones walked away from the TARDIS.

"Jack, you're not suggesting what I think you're suggesting, are you?"

Jack grinned. "Come on—"

"Hey you two!" They both turned to see Mickey Smith jogging after them. Jack groaned good-naturedly.

"Thought I got rid of you!"

Mickey slowed to a walk as he reached Martha's side. "Nah, you can't get rid of me. I'll just come right back."

Martha laughed, earning her a smile from Mickey. He threw his arms around the two of them.

"So what's the plan Captain?" he asked as they strolled through the park. It was a beautiful day and the park was alive with dozens of people happy to once again see a sky over their heads instead of unfamiliar planets.

Jack shrugged. "I've got some empty spots open at Torchwood that you two would fill nicely. Just as long as you don't fight with Gwen and…"

Jack suddenly stopped cold, staring past Mickey. Mickey had stopped too, his eyes wide.

Martha was gone.

"Martha?" Jack called, turning on the spot. "Martha!" She was nowhere in sight. Jack rounded on Mickey. "Where did she go?"

Mickey shook his head, eyes wide. "She was just here… she just… vanished. Into thin air."

Jack's brow furrowed in confusion. "But how could she…?"He flipped open his vortex manipulator. The Doctor had scrambled the teleport/time jump but it still worked as a vortex scanner. His eyes widened. "That's not good."

Mickey turned to him. "What is? What's going on?"

"Something's happening. Something bad, very bad." He looked back the direction they had come, hoping the Doctor was still there. The box was gone.

"We're on our own…" He realized.

Mickey looked to Jack. "What do we do?"

Jack flipped his vortex manipulator closed and started jogging. "We've got to get back to Torchwood…" He called over his shoulder. "Come on! Hurry!"

Mickey broke into a run and quickly caught up to Jack. The two time travelers dashed through the park, dodging the people celebrating the return of the Earth to its proper place.

All of them were unaware that something far worse was coming.

:-:-:-:

The Master had the Doctor. He had grabbed him in the collision and he had him, he had him, he had him. He grinned, feeling successful. Certainly, things were not looking too bright at the moment. They were stranded on some strange planet, but they were both alive, as the Master intended. They would both remain alive. He wanted them to remain alive, because they needed each other. The Doctor needed the Master, just as the Master needed him. They were too similar to coexist peacefully, and yet, they could not live without the other. It was an odd symbiosis, a delicate balance between life and death, for even gods could die.

The Doctor was a mess, covered in dirt and debris, lying on his back on the ground of this planet. Slowly, far too slowly, his blue eyes opened and he viewed the Master kneeling near him.

"You." He said, his voice hoarse.

"Yes, me." The Master grinned. "It was always me, wasn't it, Doctor? Always me."

"What are you doing?" The Doctor coughed, turning onto his side in pain. "What is going on? Where's Martha? Where's the TARDIS? What are you doing here?"

The Master smiled. "Why, I'm here for you, Doctor."


	4. Injury

Chapter 4: Injury

It turned out the TARDIS had landed much further away than either Amy or Donna had thought. They had been walking for over an hour, headed towards the place the TARDIS had fallen. 

“…so then we climbed out from under the river and we saw the Empress get shot down by the army,” Donna was saying, recounting the story of how she’d met the Doctor. “After that he took me home.”

Amy adjusted her bag, which was digging painfully into her shoulder and asked, “Why? Didn’t you want to go with ‘im?” 

Donna fidgeted. “Well…no.”

“You didn’t?” Amy could not imagine how that must feel. All she had ever wanted, since she was seven, was to run away with the man from the sky. Who could possibly find escape unappealing?

“I’ve changed my mind now though,” Donna said, shifting her backpack. “I’ve done some traveling of my own and I’ve realized…it’s just not the same once you’re seen the world. No, the universe from that daft old box.”

They were both silent for a moment. They were climbing a rather steep hill, heading towards a second higher hill, where a small cottage was perched. 

“How did you meet him?” Donna asked Amy.

“He fell from the sky,” Amy began, the familiar cadence of the story slipping out. Years of therapy and four therapists had given her practice recounting that night. “When I was seven. He’d come about the crack in my wall, to close it and save me from the voices.” 

She sighed, the thought still painful. “He said he’d only be five minutes but…”

Donna reached out and took Amy’s hand gently. She said, Amy nodding along in agreement. “He is wonderful and impossible, isn’t he?” 

Another somber pause and then Donna added, “But that man cannot drive worth a damn.”

Amy chuckled and offered Donna a grateful smile. Donna grinned and they kept walking, climbing the hill hand in hand.

Amy usually took an immediate dislike to people. Granted, most of the people she interacted with were from Leadworth and they all knew her as ‘Amy with the imaginary friend, the Doctor.’ Everyone there, except Rory and Mels, kept a careful, almost condescending distance from her and she didn’t care. But this woman, Donna, she was different. Donna was the first person not to laugh at her story or walk away with that familiar nod in recognition of insanity. But more than any of that, Donna had known the Doctor. 

At that moment, Amy decided she trusted this other woman completely. She chuckled through a suddenly tight throat. “Raggedy man said…”

Donna turned back in confusion. “Huh?”

“I call him ‘Raggedy man,’” Amy said, “because when I met him, he’d crashed in my backyard and his clothes were all torn and ragged.” 

“Really? Pity, I think he only has the one suit…but just goes to show that he’s a terrible driver.” She shook her head but she was smiling. Glancing up the hill, Donna’s eyes suddenly lit up. She called, dropping Amy’s hand, “Look!”

Amy turned to follow where Donna was pointing and felt her heart leap; in the dip between two hills, was a blue space ship. They had made it. 

“It’s the box!” Amy cried, jumping up and down in excitement. She had thought that she would never see it again. She had thought that he would never come back. Granted, he had not, but she would at least get to see him again.

Mid-jump, almost like being hit by lightning, the significance of the scene before them hit Amy hard and all her mirth evaporated. “…why does it look like that?”

Donna’s face was pale. “This isn’t right…”

She took off running and Amy was quick to follow.

As they reached the smoking box lying on its side, the pair paused. Amy asked, “Do you think we can go near it?” 

“Only one way to find out…” Donna boldly walked forward and delivered a hard kick to the wooden blue door. It unceremoniously fell open. 

Amy could not be sure, but the box seemed to make some kind of whirring noise, almost as if it were annoyed with her actions. 

Donna wrenched the door open further and gestured Amy forward. Her heart pounding fast, Amy walked up to the box that had haunted her dreams and stooped over next to Donna. Together, they crawled through the door and into the Doctor’s machine.

Amy felt her jaw drop. Donna glanced at her and chuckled. “Oh… right. Yeah, it’s bigger on the inside and all…”

“…yeah…”

It was not just that though. The room, while far too large for its shell was also partially torn apart, as if a tornado had ripped through the room. Several of the support columns that looked like large pieces of coral had chunks ripped out of them, others were crumbling or in several pieces on the ground. The large golden column in the center glowed with a soft golden light, but it seemed to be fading even as Amy looked at it. 

Something was very wrong here.

A foreboding shiver ripped through the younger redhead. “What happened?”

“Oh my God… there’s someone in here!” Donna ran forward, towards the body she had spotted sticking out from under a large section of coral. “Doctor?” 

Amy stayed back, suddenly apprehensive of what they would find. She had not seen him in years, what was she going to say? What if he did not remember her? What if he was dead?

Donna wrenched the piece of coral aside and began to clear the other debris from around the body. 

“It’s not him,” she announced to Amy, after a moment’s digging.

Now Amy saw the black hair, the leather jacket, the tell-tale signs of a woman’s body.  
It wasn’t Raggedy Man.

She took a step forward to get a better look. 

“Oh God… is she dead?” But even as the words left her mouth, the woman let out a groan and her hand twitched. As soon as she saw this, all of Amy’s apprehension vanished and she dashed forward to help Donna.

After dating a nurse for over a year, Amy had picked up a few tricks for emergencies. She checked for a pulse and scanned the woman’s body for injuries. There was a large cut on her forehead that was bleeding sluggishly. Her pulse was slow but strong.

“She’s pretty badly injured but stable,” Amy told Donna. She opened up her backpack and pulled out the first aid kit Rory had packed for her. She pulled out a long linen bandage and began to unwind it. “But we’ll need to treat this head injury.” 

“Where’s the Doctor?” Donna asked, her voice shaking. Amy looked up. The older redhead was blinking hard, tears gathering in her eyes.

Amy was also concerned about where Raggedy Man was, but right now they had to treat this woman before she died from blood loss. She carefully began to wrap the bandage around the woman’s head, checking for other injuries as she did so.

“What can we do?” Donna asked, seemingly like she was trying to get a hold of herself so she could be useful.

Amy tried to think. What had Rory said about head injuries? Could they move her? Yes, she thought so; it was neck injuries they couldn’t move.

“There was a house up the other hill,” Amy told Donna. “Let’s get her up there, maybe someone lives there who can help us.”

Donna nodded, wiping a stray tear away. “Let’s go.”

Being careful to support the girl’s neck, Donna and Amy carried the wounded girl gingerly between them out of the wrecked TARDIS towards the small house resting on the hilltop.

Martha’s head was pounding. Her limbs felt heavy and cold. She was floating, stuck somewhere in time and space…

“… Doctor…” Even her voice hurt. It echoed endlessly and uselessly across a white void…  
There was nothing, no one. Was this death?

Where was he? 

:-:-:-:-:

“We’re outside?”

“No, we’re still in the TARDIS.” The Doctor replied, gripping her hand tighter.

They were standing on the edge of a great precipice that dropped quickly into the mist below. The air was cold on her skin after the fires of the TARDIS core. Clara looked around, utterly bewildered and still out of breath. “There’s no way across…” 

The Doctor followed her gaze, taking in the barren, misty cliffs around them. “Nope, you’re right.”

“So what do we do?” she asked, adrenaline still pumping through her veins from the events of the past few minutes. “Time for a plan, do you have a plan?”

“Well…no,” he said slowly. “No plan, sorry.”

“If you don’t have a plan we’re dead!” Clara shouted, rounding on them. She turned back to the cliff, trying to think of anything they could do. He always had a plan, or came up with something. Even just now as he had lamented the fact that a future version of her had died (what had that been about?), he had managed to come up with an escape. 

“Yes. We are,” the Doctor said in a voice that made Clara freeze. She turned to face him. He was staring at her very intently. He said, “So, just tell me.” 

“Tell you what?” She asked, a little uncomfortable under his gaze.

He gestured at the crevasse before them. “Well, there’s no point now. We’re about to die, just tell me who you are.”

Clara felt her brow wrinkle in confusion. “You know who I am.” He had met her: the normal girl from Lancaster who just wanted to travel.

“No, I don’t,” he said and something seemed to snap within him. He leaned close to her and peered into her face. “I look at you every single day and I don’t understand a thing about you, why do I keep running into you?” He began to pace the short distance from the door to the cliff edge and back, running his hand through his hair in agitation. 

“Doctor…” Clara said slowly, trying to understand. “You invited me. You said…”

“Before that!” He shouted, running back to her. “I met you at the dalek asylum, there was a girl in a shipwreck and she died saving my life and she was you.” 

“She really wasn’t…”

He was nearly manic by this point. “Victorian London,” he interrupted, gesturing wildly. “There was a governess who was really a barmaid and we fought the Great Intelligence together. She died and it was my fault. And she was you.”

Clara took a step back at the certainty in his voice. “You’re scaring me…” How could he have met her? How could she have died?

“What are you, eh?” He shouted at her, furiously stalking up to her. “A trick? A trap?” The anger in his voice was paralyzing, like a dog you had believed to be friendly suddenly snarling and bearing its teeth.

Clara had always hated dogs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She took another step back in fear and gravity suddenly seemed to be pulling on her harder. She had reached the edge of the cliff. Before she could even scream, his arms were around her, pulling her back to safety.

She clung to him, her terror quickly fading at his reassuring, steadfast grip. He was here; he would keep her safe. He buried his face in her shoulder as if in relief. They pulled back and Clara found she could not read the expression on his face. 

“You really don’t do you?” he asked, all the anger gone from his expression.

Clara held him at arm’s length. “I think I’m more scared of you right now then of anything else on that TARDIS.” She had never seen him like this: full of fire and rage and hatred. And all of it directed at her. It was terrifying, being on the receiving end of that, like a storm breaking just over her. 

He did not appear to be listening.

“You’re just Clara, aren’t you?” He poked her face a couple of times, laughing and pulled her cheeks and then pulled her into another very tight hug. 

Now he was back to being the crazy Doctor she knew. 

“Okay…” she said, relaxing into the embrace. “I don’t know what the hell this is about but the hug is really nice.”

He paused for a moment, then pulled back. She recognized this expression, he was thinking.

“We’re not going to die here…” he said. He released her and picked up a rock. “This isn’t real.” He tossed the rock over the cliff. It hung in the air for a second before falling far too fast. He cried, “It’s a snarl!” 

“A what?”

“What does a wounded animal do,” he asked her, “it tries to scare everyone away. We’re close to the engine, the TARDIS is snarling at us trying to frighten us off.” He grinned in realization. “We need to jump…”

She looked at the ledge again, the gaping chasm. “You’re insane!”

“We’ll cross a portal to the engine,” he reassured her, taking her hand. 

“How can you be so sure?” she asked as they backed up to the door.

“Well I can’t…” he admitted. 

Well, that was reassuring. “Well, okay then…well that’s watertight.” 

“Hey, now, Clara,” he reprimand her gently. “I have piloted this ship for over 900 years, trust me this one time please.” She gave him a look. He acknowledged it with an uneasy smile. “Okay, as well as all the other times,” he implored. “Ready?”

She nodded, her heart rate starting to pick up again, only this time in excitement. 

He gripped her hand. “Geronimo!”

They ran forward together. 

As the ground vanished from beneath her running feet, Clara felt the Doctor’s hand vanish from the tight grip it had on her own.

Her empty hand clawed at the air. “Doctor?”

She fell alone.

:-:-:-:-:

Rory Williams was wandering. Not that that was particularly exciting, he’d been wandering nearly two millennia. No wait… that was the dream. 

He shook his head violently. The delusion was persistent, it snuck up on him whenever he lost his focus and it invaded his mind, his ancient mind that had watched Rome fall. The mind that had survived the Dark Ages, the World Wars, the Cold War…

And then there was her…

See? There it was again!

Rory tightened the straps on his backpack and marched onwards with intense concentration. He couldn’t let himself slip back into that fantasy. It was too full of impossibilities, of inaccuracies. He wasn’t two thousand years old. He wasn’t from Rome and he wasn’t wandering hopelessly. At least, he hoped he wasn’t.

Stones crunched under his boots. There was something he had to find.

A woman… a woman with red hair and a thick Scottish accent… 

He never got a name; she did not seem to have one. However, he knew he had to find her. She would know why he was out here in the middle of nowhere. She would know why he had two thousand years’ worth of memories drifting around in his subconscious. 

He just had to find her, if she was real.

Something came out of nowhere and hit him on the head with a hard thunk. More out of shock than instinct, he caught the incriminating object as it fell.

“What the…?”

It was a banana.

Then he heard the scream.

As he looked up at the sky, he wondered, of all the things to fall from the sky, first a banana in the middle of the Scottish countryside and now a woman?

Maybe he was crazy.

His arms and chest still throbbing from where the girl had crashed into him, Rory dug around in his knapsack until he pulled out a canteen of water and a first aid kit. Never go anywhere without the tools of your trade his dad always said. Rory’s were his nursing supplies. 

He moved back to where he’d gently laid the woman down, her head supported by his sleeping roll, her injured ankle by his blanket. As he gently bathed her scratches with water and wrapped up her sprained ankle, Rory found himself examining the woman before him. She was young, about his age maybe a little younger. She had blonde hair and a trim, fit figure. She was wearing black pants and a tight, purple leather jacket. She was clearly very pretty and Rory found he was inexplicably drawn to her, though not for that reason.

His mind would only focus on the redheaded girl from his false memories. Perhaps it was time to face the reality that she, like the rest of his two thousand years of, wasn’t real. Here was a beautiful woman in front of him and Rory found he still could not find her attractive. Something was seriously wrong with him.

The woman shifted as he gently moistened her lips with water from his canteen.

“…Doctor…” She moaned.

That single word sent an unparalleled jolt of recognition through him.

Doctor.

That name… a name that he knew, he suddenly realized. The Doctor. The name stirred not only his false memories but what little of his actual memories he still had.

A brown head bursting out of a cake… a thin, excitable man in a bowtie running around a ridiculous console, pulling levers and pushing buttons…

He needed to find the Doctor.

Half an hour later, the blonde woman finally woke up completely. She screamed so abruptly that Rory nearly burned his hand on the water he was boiling over his fire and sat bolt upright.

“It worked… it worked, I was there. I… I touched the TARDIS… I…” She floundered around, as if looking for something.

“Calm down! It’s alright.” He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and pushed her back into a lying position. “You’re pretty banged up, just relax.”

She sat right back up again. “Something went wrong, I have to find him!” She pushed him away with surprising strength and tried to stand. Her ankle collapsed under her and she fell with a whimper.

Rory grabbed her under the shoulders and helped her lie back down, keeping a firm hand on her shoulders to keep her from trying to get up again.

“How are you feeling?” He asked.

She took several deep breaths and winced. “Like I just fell through time without a TARDIS.”

“TARDIS…” the word sent a similar jolt through him. 

A room that was far too large… a gentle whirring in his head…

“I wasn’t supposed to land here…” The girl was saying, still looking around. “at least it appears to be on Earth… where are we anyway?”

He shrugged. “Somewhere in Scotland.” He was a little surprised by his lack of response to her lack of knowledge of where she was. Then again, she had fallen out of a clear blue sky.

“Somewhere? What, you don’t know either?”

Rory shrugged. “I’m kind of lost myself.”

She smiled at him. “Well, we have that in common then. You aren’t an alien are you?”

“Ummm… no.” Rory said, wondering if his false memories counted as ‘alien’. They certainly felt like it sometimes. 

“Sorry, I’m not making a ton of sense am I? Sorry.” 

Rory found himself smiling. Something about this girl was interesting, mysterious almost. She was more than she appeared to be and gave the hint that he would never know more about her than she decided to tell him. “It’s fine. Who are you?” He asked, wondering if he’d get an answer.

He didn’t have to wonder long. “My name is Rose.” She said. “Rose Tyler.” 

The name sent no jolt through him. It was a nice name nonetheless. “Nice to meet you Rose, I’m Rory.”

:-:-:-:-:

“Here for me? What does that mean?” the Doctor shook his head, looking up at the Master through the pain that was nearly blinding him into senselessness.

“We were always going to end up at this point, Doctor, didn’t you realize?” The Master laughed a little manically as he got to his feet and started pacing, gesticulating wildly as he spoke quick and fast, his voice soft and controlled, but an edge there, the hint of something pushing him forward, pushing him towards the edge. “Of course you realized. That is why you pushed me aside, why you tossed aside everything at the end of the war, at the end of the fighting, at the end. The end of everything we knew. You opened up a gate you should not have, Doctor; you knew what lay beneath. As it lies above, so it must lay beneath. You cannot deny what you saw when you looked in the void, in that void, the emptiness that lies at the beginning and the end of time and space and everything. The nothingness from which we have come from, sprung on a whim of some god or maybe just an insane man driven to the edge, that same edge that we walk about, the time lords, on the edge of good and evil, of real and nothing. I did not come here by my own volition, Doctor. You drove me here. You brought me to this point. You pushed me too far and I let you. Oh, did I let you. But do not think I will just stand here and let you push me over the edge! No, no, no, no. I will not just fall and fade away into nothing at all! I will take you down with me, Doctor. We can’t live without each other, but we can’t live with each other, that’s a puzzle, isn’t it? We need this. We need to jump into the chasm and fall.”

“What are you talking about?” The Doctor managed to pull himself into an upright position with only a soft whimper of pain. He looked up at the crazed time lord in front of him and shook his head, feeling sorry for the Master. “You’re mad.”

“You’re mad. You’re insane! We’re insane, Doctor!” The Master darted over to the Doctor sinking to his knees and grabbed the Doctor’s chin hard, tugging him close so the Doctor could not look anywhere else except into those crazed blue eyes. “We are one and the same, Doctor. Don’t you see it? Why don’t you see it? Why don’t you hear it?! Why can’t you hear it? It’s the drums, Doctor, but I know what they are now. They are not just an idle beat, playing constantly in my head. They are a funeral march. Our funeral march, because I will not go without you. I will not die without you.”

“Calm down, we can talk about this. It doesn’t need to go that far,” the Doctor pleaded softly, trying to calm the madman in front of him. “No one needs to die.”

“No one needs to die?” The Master laughed, shoving the Doctor back to the ground as he got to his feet. He was manic and vivid, a blur in front of the Doctor’s eyes. He was a hurricane that would not stop. “Oh, that’s hilarious, Doctor! Of course no one needs to die. But they’re going to. We will all die in the end, Doctor, and you know that the best of anyone. You know the frailty of life and the balance that we exist in, taking and giving, a constant struggle and a perpetual battle. In the end, we will always lose, Doctor. You will lose your head, just as I’ve lost mine, and then you’ll lose your life, because that is the payment that the void demands.”

“The void? Are you still talking about—”

“I am talking about the chasm of time, the emptiness of our lives, the nothingness that we exist in!” the Master shouted those words, his voice breaking. He stared at the Doctor, breathing hard. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, almost sweet. “I speak of everything that ever was and everything that will never be. There is a madness that eats away at us, Doctor, ebbs and grows and sinks its teeth in. It is what we never were able to be. It is what we need to be, but to be it, we must be dead.”

“So you’re going to kill me? Here?” The Doctor looked around the dismal place and then sat up a bit straighter. There was no reasoning with a madman, but if they were both to die, here was not a bad place. No one else would be harmed.

“Oh, no, no.” The Master walked quickly back over to the Doctor, sinking to his knees next to him and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. He leaned his head against the Doctor’s, closing his eyes. “No, Doctor, my Doctor, this is not where you will die, this is not where I will die. We still have many miles to go, but the path is cold…so, so cold, Doctor. There’s only us here. No, no, I can’t kill you here, Doctor. I must first take you home and let you stand trial, but then, you’ll be mine to punish. Mine to kill. And once I kill you, I can die happy, secure in the knowledge that I have saved the world from you! You won’t hurt anyone else, Doctor…I will ensure that. It is just us, from here on out, my Doctor, and there is no one here to save you or even try to! This is the end, Doctor, the end of both of us. Don’t worry, you won’t be alone, not even in your grave. I’ll be there, always watching, always waiting. Always stopping you from the path of pain and destruction that you leave behind you, from place to place, always weaving together people’s lives and leaving them to pick up the pieces. Not anymore, Doctor. This is your end.”


End file.
